Charanjeet Singh Bhatia v. Director of Local Bodies, GNCTD - (Central Information Commission) (25 Jan 2016)

CIC chastises Delhi CMO for acting like ‘post office’

MANU/CI/0015/2016

Right to Information

In a case of be careful what you wish for, a senior citizen received detailed responses to his application under the Right to Information Act, 2005, only it may not have been the information he may have been seeking. By his initial RTI application, Appellant had sought information regarding non-payment of his wife’s handicap pension for 10 months, instead he received a file containing papers detailing transfer of his application. In the process of ‘reply’, the application was transferred between 38 departments of the Delhi government, including two municipal corporations. The Commission remained steadfastly under-impressed with the conduct of the CMO, responsible for answering questions of non-payment of pensions, in accepting transfers between Departments, each simply intimating transfer of application to another Department. Aside from a white paper on the status updates on payment of all Delhi Government pensions, the Commission ordered compensation of Rs. 1,00,000 to in favour of Appellant and initiation of action against Public Information Officers of Departments that partook in the wild goose chase.

Tags : RTI APPLICATION TRANSFER PENSION